Orange is the new Mission Brown

4 min read
4 min read

The Grattan Institute has recently published what it describes as a Commonwealth Orange Book, a not very helpful guide for an incoming government on policy reforms. A lack of any national mood for adopting the types of policies they are advocating is seen as something that should be defied, with opposition to be stared down.

They might be doing a lot of staring in terms of superannuation policy as both the Coalition and Labor have made it clear that they are not interested in making any adverse changes to superannuation tax and like arrangements other than those already announced or in train.

Grattan in a number of ways has come up with a vision for superannuation which is very Mission Brown in colour. Used extensively in the 1970s, this muted, semi-chocolatey stain touched a huge number of homes; generally in ways that make us feel a little icky.

Mission Brown did not work then, and their Orange does not work now. Dull and unattractive are not adjectives you really want associated with anything. Their policies are also like a return to the 1970s in several other ways, including a greater reliance for retirement incomes on the Age Pension, and with good superannuation balances being the right of only a relative few.

The international scorecard which they have compiled for the document actually rates the Australian retirement income system quite well relative to other countries, at least in regard to the limited metrics that they put forward. We spend a relatively small percentage of GDP on the government provided Age Pension and replacement rates of income in retirement are relatively good for low to middle income earners. While the cost of tax concessions for retirement savings are a bit higher than in some countries because of greater reliance in Australia on private saving for retirement, the combined cost of the Age Pension and tax concessions—both now and projected into the future—is lower than the cost of government payments to the aged in just about every other developed country.

While Australia may appear less favourable when comparing the running costs of private pension schemes, the data used by Grattan are quite flawed and do not take into account the relatively strong investment returns achieved in Australia. Bonds are cheap to invest in compared to infrastructure and private equity but in a low interest rate environment they do not deliver the investment returns needed to drive good outcomes in defined contribution superannuation plans.

Compulsory superannuation in Australia is still a maturing system but it is really starting to deliver for retirees.

Recently published ATO figures indicate that for individuals aged 60 to 64, who are retired or approaching retirement, superannuation balances were quite substantial in 2016-17. For those with super, the average for males was $336,360 with a median of $154,453 and for females the average was $277,880 with a median of $122,848. These figures are well up on just two years earlier, when the median for males was $138,337 and $107,897 for females.

The data indicate that average and median balances actually increase after age 65. This somewhat surprising outcome appears to be driven by a significant number of low account balance individuals cashing out their superannuation after age 65. The data indicate that there were 565,400 males with superannuation aged 60 to 64 but only 400,936 with superannuation aged 65 to 69. For females the equivalent figures were 523,676 and 358,582.

However, the number of people aged 65 plus with superannuation was large, with 857,864 males and 722,538 females falling within that category. These numbers are well up on just two years earlier, when there were 745,693 males with superannuation and 599,519 females.

The Australian superannuation system is delivering substantial outcomes for Australians. Australians know this, with the great majority of Australians supporting the compulsory system and the move to 12 per cent Superannuation Guarantee contributions.

However, there remains considerable scope to further improve the system. ASFA’s proposals for an incoming government include the following:

  • moving the SG rate to 12 per cent as soon as possible
  • stabilising the tax settings for super over the course of the next Parliament
  • boosting balances for women and low-income earners
  • lifting the bar for MySuper
  • providing SG for gig economy workers.

Australia needs to look forward and plan for even better outcomes, rather than looking back and replicating the shortcomings of our past.

Picture of By Ross Clare

By Ross Clare

director of research

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Few speakers can match Derek Thompson‘s ability to synthesize mega-trends in society, labor, economics, technology, and politics. Put another way: Derek trawls the data sets and does the forecasting and deep reporting necessary to help us better understand how we live, how we vote, how we spend, and how we work.

In his paradigm-shifting #1 New York Times bestseller, Abundance (co-written with Ezra Klein), this award-winning journalist reveals how our policies and culture have pushed us into a world of scarcity (not enough housing, workers, or progress)—and offers a radical new path towards a world where housing is affordable, energy is plentiful, and innovation flourishes across industries.

He shares a compelling vision of a future where we have more than enough for everybody, and a practical, actionable roadmap for how to get there. It starts with taking more risks, building more expansively, and recognizing that we all have the power to create a world of abundance. “Everything’s utopian until it’s reality,” he says.

Carmen Beverley-Smith

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Carmen joined APRA in March 2023 and holds the role of Executive Director, Life and Private Health Insurance and Superannuation.  

She has had an esteemed career in financial services, spanning over 25 years. She has held diverse leadership roles at Westpac and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, including across risk, transformation and change, product and portfolio development, and sales and service. 

Prior to joining APRA, she held the role of General Manager, Risk Transformation Delivery Integration at Westpac. This involved leading the group-wide implementation of a suite of solutions to uplift risk management capability and develop data, analytics and reporting. 

Carmen leads with a values-driven approach and a particular interest in developing and mentoring talent. 

She holds a Bachelor of Commerce and Accounting, is a certified Chartered Accountant and a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. 

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Amy C. Edmondson is the Novartis Professor of Leadership and Management at the Harvard Business School, a chair established to support the study of human interactions that lead to the creation of successful enterprises that contribute to the betterment of society.

Edmondson has been recognized by the biannual Thinkers50 global ranking of management thinkers since 2011, and most recently was ranked #1 in 2021 and 2023; she also received that organization’s Breakthrough Idea Award in 2019, and Talent Award in 2017.  She studies teaming, psychological safety, and organisational learning, and her articles have been published in numerous academic and management outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review and California Management Review. Her 2019 book, The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation and Growth (Wiley), has been translated into 15 languages. Her prior books – Teaming: How organizations learn, innovate and compete in the knowledge economy (Jossey-Bass, 2012), Teaming to Innovate (Jossey-Bass, 2013) and Extreme Teaming (Emerald, 2017) – explore teamwork in dynamic organisational environments. In Building the future: Big teaming for audacious innovation (Berrett-Koehler, 2016), she examines the challenges and opportunities of teaming across industries to build smart cities. 

Edmondson’s latest book, Right Kind of Wrong (Atria), builds on her prior work on psychological safety and teaming to provide a framework for thinking about, discussing, and practicing the science of failing well. First published in the US and the UK in September, 2023, the book is due to be translated into 24 additional languages, and was selected for the Financial Times and Schroders Best Business Book of the Year award.

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Daniel Mulino MP

Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services

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Born in Brindisi, Italy, Daniel was a young child when he moved with his family to Australia. He grew up in Canberra and completed his first degrees – arts and law – at the ANU. He then completed a Master of Economics (University of Sydney) and a PhD in economics from Yale.

He lectured at Monash University, was an economic adviser in the Gillard government and was a Victorian MP from 2014 to 2018. As Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer of Victoria, Daniel helped deliver major infrastructure projects and developed innovative financing structures for community projects.

In 2018 he was preselected for the new federal seat of Fraser and became its first MP at the 2019 election, re-elected in 2022 and 2025. From 2022 to 2025, Daniel was chair of the House of Representatives’ Standing Economics Committee in which he chaired inquiries; economic dynamism, competition and business formation and insurers’ responses to 2022 major floods claims.

In 2025, he became the Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services.

In August 2022, Daniel published ‘Safety Net: The Future of Welfare in Australia’, which aims to explore the ways in which an insurance approach can improve the effectiveness of government service delivery.